It started with a Groupon offer to digitize 1,000 photos for $29.99.
“Wow!” I said. “An easy down-sizing project!” And mentally pictured my mile-wide basement brigade of photo boxes melting into one handy silver DVD.
This would be after my three adult children had spent a happy evening of reminiscing, in which I would spring for pizza and they would pick out their faves for scanning.
We got as far as the pizza, which they down-sized immediately.
As for the photos, not so much. On the positive side, for a mere $29.99, I got a Groupon deadline and transformed three adults with wildly differing opinions into one voice:
“You pick,” they said in unison. “We trust you.”
Funny, but their vote of confidence gave me the same sinking feeling I had when the “childhood treasure boxes” I made for them to take home one Christmas landed back in my basement. Along with a hulking family desk – from someone we were related to in Cleveland – and a full set of china from my late mother.
I should not be surprised. Helping parents down-size is about as popular as dieting. Yeah, it’s a good idea. And let’s start it next week.
At least two syndromes conspire to create this predicament.
One is the politeness syndrome. We knock ourselves out teaching our kids manners, and it finally kicks in when they have moved out and it’s time to clear stuff – theirs and ours – from the basement.
When we say, “Would you like this china someday?” they will politely say, “Maybe someday. It’s really pretty.”
Now we have to knock ourselves out teaching them the New Politeness, or “Just Say No” to heirlooms. For example, “I really can’t see myself using it.” Or even, “Not in a million years. It’s ugly.” Or “You’ve got to be kidding. Why would I want that?”
Brutally honest helps to curb the second syndrome – “geriatric nesting” or “preservation.” Just as pregnant women paint kitchen cabinets at 8.5 months, all of us (even men) are programmed to pass down the good stuff we created in the nest to future birds to make their nests.
There’s nothing better than a brutally honest answer to help us sort out the good nest-building stuff (like maybe interesting stories) from stuff that is not as functional as a desk we can slap together from Ikea.
“They would rather have Ikea!” I have heard friends snort, which certainly puts a damper on The New Politeness.
And that is too bad, in light of a program I attended a month or so ago on how to preserve paper and fabrics for posterity. Professional archivists taught us how to use archival boxes, folders and special plastic sleeves.
I myself was rapt with attention until I began to calculate the likely cost of capturing my basement in this way compared with, say, a trip around the world.
The evening became especially terrifying with the suggestion that maybe – just in case – I should save all those photos I had now captured on a disk, wrap them in archival paper, and place them in archival boxes. Which is pretty much where I started, minus the paper.
Considering the time, cost and space involved, the obvious solution is to be especially selective about what I archive this way.
Probably, this calls for more pizza and a family meeting in which I request brutal honesty.
Perhaps they will specify which items go into one 15”x12”x10” box. But I’m suspect they will trust me completely.
Copyright 2014 Pat Snyder
